Science

Pluto’s demotion

Leave it to the nerds at the International Astronomical Union to ruin a kid’s day.

For half of their young lives, the sixth-graders in the Young Scientists program at Barrington Elementary School in North Austin have been told that there are nine planets in the solar system. So when their teacher, Paige Baker, told them that union scientists on Thursday had decided to delete Pluto from that list, it was understandable that some students had difficultly handling the gravity of the decision.

“It’s been with us so long. Why would they do this?” asked Nikki Chupa, 11, who always used the mnemonic “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” to remember the order of the planets.

“Why do they have to go mess stuff up?” 11-year-old Angelique Price asked.

Baker told them she felt their pain.

“Imagine what it’s like for me, and I’ve been told this for years — double digits even,” she said. “But you’ve got remember, these are scientists. It’s not a popularity contest.” (Source: The Statesman)

Uggh. To be a cartoonist and to open up your morning newspaper and to look again at your work from the previous day only to discover a spelling mistake is a very dreadful thing. It’s an immediate grouch maker. You feel stupid, and angry, and worthless, and thoroughly embarassed. I put an apostrophe in a word where it didn’t belong. “It’s” should’ve read “its”. I caught the mistake this morning and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

In other news… Yesterday’s news of the government moving to restart the nuclear power plant at Chalk River in order to solve the shortage of medical isotopes inspired this cartoon.

I thought I’d pass this by a cousin I have who works at MIT in the area of Chemistry. Here’s what he had to say:

That’s great! I’m going to post this cartoon in my lab at MIT. My co-worker is from Edmonton so she’ll at least get part of the joke.

Science gets such little exposure in popular culture that any attention whatsoever is nice to have.

McMaster has a small nuclear reactor – as do many university-affiliated hospitals – for making radio-isotopes for use in medicine. Some have extremely short half-lives – on the order of hours – so they must be made in-house and used immediately. The more long-lived isotopes, like those made at Chalk River – can be transported.

I work with isotopes on occasion – they have their uses- , but not the radioactive ones which require special training and equipment, not to mention disposal hazards. But there are some people in the labs downstairs who use them. That also might help explain why they are such weirdos. That, and the fact they work in the basement.

Ironically the molecules you’ve drawn our eminent PM as holding look like cyclobutane derivatives. They are quite unstable due to something we call ring strain – carbon doesn’t like to make such small rings – and seeing those little pieces fly off reminds me of the times I’ve tried to build them with model kits and watched the pieces blow up in my hands as I bent them past the breaking point. I’d imagine that radioactive cyclobutanes would be even more unstable, so Isotope Man really has his work cut out for him.

And here it is, on exhibit at the world reknowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

Know of any other place where my cartoons are on display? Send me your photos and I’ll post ’em here.

The Globe and Mail writes in a tongue in cheek editorial today on the death of a cartoon cliche thanks to some recent paleontological findings conflicting with long established theories of evolution. It must be the silly summer season when Canada’s national newspaper opines about anthropology, even more so when it’s suggested cartoonists will lose an over used cliche of a fish evolving through different stages of simian characteristics until it ends up resembling a human.

Will Science eventually destroy every cliche device known to cartoonists? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Here are a couple of my own evolution cliche cartoons

A nice little rant by a local writer on today’s Op-ed page as a counter to the reams of newsprint devoted earnestly and often eye glazingly to doing something about global warming, climate change and blah blah blah. It’s sure to rankle the greennecks out there. I’ve already overheard one of the greener reporters in the newsroom chew out the Op-ed editor author for running this article. Bravo to Tom Langdon!

A critical look at the ‘disciples of doom’ What are the agendas of climate activists?by Tom Langdon

Enough already! I’ve had it up to here with the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki telling us the world is going to end next week.

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe diatribes delivered by people that have no expertise in a field of study as complex as this one.

If you think I’m off base, look up Suzuki’s degrees and you will find he has degrees in biology and zoology and at one time was respected by his peers for his knowledge in those fields.

However, he does not have a degree in climatology.

Perhaps that’s why he refuses to publicly debate a real climatologist and prefers to just present a one-sided view through speeches to the converted and through interviews with the media who hang on his every word as if he were the Almighty Himself (or is it Herself?).

At least Suzuki is a Canadian and as such has a right to criticize what he perceives as shortcomings by the various governing bodies in this country.

Gore, on the other hand, is a foreigner who thinks he has a right to come here and say all manner of outrageous things about our governments’ actions. Talk about an unwelcome guest.

His slick little movie (An Inconvenient Lie?) certainly has grabbed the attention of lots of people and caused the federal opposition parties to suddenly forget every other problem this country faces and come out screaming for changes that could drastically affect our way of life.

Good grief, does nothing else matter anymore? What do you think is Gore’s real motive? Is it absolute altruism? Does he really believe all the stuff he preaches? If so, why does he live in such a large mansion that sucks up power like there’s no tomorrow? Shouldn’t he shut it down and find some more modest accommodation in keeping with what he is recommending to everyone else? By the way, when was the last time you trusted your life to a politician?

Let’s take a moment and ask some uncomfortable questions (for some people anyway).

* Why has the mantra quietly changed from “global warming” to “climate change”? Is it because the real educated climatology experts have seriously shot down that claim?

* What is the dreaded “climate change” anyway? Well, I think there is a better, simpler word for it. It’s called weather and it happens all the time. This is a living planet and as such is constantly changing. For it to stop changing would mean the planet was dead for heaven’s sake.

* Why shouldn’t we eliminate carbon dioxide? Isn’t it poisoning our world? Well, what do you think plants breathe in? Carbon dioxide. And what do they breathe out? Oxygen. We consume the oxygen that comes from plant life. If the plants are deprived of what they need, what will happen to them? They will suffer and ultimately die, of course. And what happens then? We’re next. And so is every other creature on this Earth.

* If we grow lots of corn to produce ethanol, won’t that be a big help?

Well, yes it would reduce our dependency on a finite resource, but there are important questions here, too. What about the poor nations that depend on our excess food production to keep from starving? What about the forests and jungles that of necessity would have to be cut down to make way for the huge corn crops that would be needed? What happens to all the creatures that live in those forests and jungles? Don’t they have a right to live, too? And how much more energy would be needed to actually create the ethanol from the corn?

* Why shouldn’t we try to clean up our environment? We should, absolutely, and the sooner the better. But the problem is not so much carbon dioxide as it is chemical pollution, sulphur dioxide and particulates.

In my humble opinion, our resources would be far better spent on finding ways to clean up the chemicals that truly are the threat to our very existence and on finding ways of creating products that can be easily and totally recycled.

Our waterways and the very air we breathe are under serious attack, not from carbon dioxide, but from all the other things that spew from our chimneys and leach from our dump sites. For years the automotive industry was rightly pilloried for causing pollution, but to their credit they are today building vehicles that are quantum leaps ahead in emission given off.

On the other hand, we have the short-sighted example of a provincial government that won’t install scrubbers on the stacks of generating stations because they won’t stop carbon dioxide!

Hello! Are you politicians listening to yourselves?

There is also the spectre of the fallout to the economy if we blindly follow the disciples of doom. Some claim the new jobs created in “green industries” would make up for the ones lost in other places. Let’s be realistic here … It ain’t gonna happen, people!

And what if one of those lost jobs is yours? How will you and your kids and your family feel about that? Will you just shrug your shoulders and say it’s OK because it’s all for the good of the world, because David Suzuki and Al Gore said so? Good luck to you.

So the bottom line is this. Let’s jump off the bandwagon for a bit and really think this thing through. Let’s look at it with clear heads and not be swayed by rhetoric coming at us from so many directions. Let’s think about what the real problems are with this old world to which we cling so tenuously. Let’s try to find out the real motives behind some people’s agendas.